Current Show:

The Feminine Mystique in Mid-Missouri, Part Two

The
works of two accomplished Mid-Missouri women artists will be
featured in a new exhibition titled "The Feminine Mystique in
Mid-Missouri, Part Two" opening March 25 at The Ashby-Hodge Gallery
of American Art at Central Methodist University in Fayette.

Artists Claudia Graham, who lives near Fayette, and Linda
Hoover, from the Sedalia area, will be present for a reception
in their honor at the gallery from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday,
March 30.

Also being shown during the exhibition are three original
paintings and a number of lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton from
the gallery's permanent collection.

Graham, a native of Pennsylvania, began experimenting with
various craft media in the early 1990s. She attended Mendocino
(Calif.) College, where she studied painting and sculpture. One
of her first exhibitions included 45 of her paintings in a
one-person show titled "Spontaneous Humor" at the Ukiah (Calif.)
Players Theater.

Other exhibitions in California displaying her unique style
and sense of humor included "Mendocino Humor from Light to
Dark," "The Absurd Silly and Unexpected" and "All Things
Organic." Many of her works are included in collections
throughout the United States.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Graham and her husband, Henry
Graham, who is an adjunct professor of art at CMU, began
traveling extensively throughout the world, including two
Atlantic Ocean crossings and trips through the Caribbean and the
Bahamas in their 33-foot sailboat named "Lionheart."

"The people and humor in my life, images from years of travel
abroad in a sailboat with my family, as well as my dreams and
imagination," Graham says in an artist's statement, "are the
inspirations for my work."

Graham's
work in the present exhibition includes her humorous oil on
hardboard painting of a waitress serving wine. It is titled
"Now, Waddya Want?" Graham says that, in addition to art, her
interests include designing and decorating houses she and her
husband have built, politics, local history, gardening and
Mediterranean cooking.

Hoover, who works in the watercolor medium, earned her
bachelor's degree in art education from the University of
Central Missouri and her master's degree in education with an
emphasis in art from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She
currently teaches art at an elementary school three days a week
and spends the rest of the week working in her art studio or at
locations where she is working on murals, caricatures or
portraits.

She recently accepted the position of superintendent of the Fine
Art Department at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, which
includes the development of a student division in art. Hoover
shows and sells her art regularly. She has had her work admitted
to numerous juried shows locally and nationally and has received
numerous prizes and awards, including her most recent
achievement - winning a competition for the cover of "Watercolor
Magic," the quarterly magazine of the Missouri Watercolor
Society.

Hoover says that her delight in working with watercolors was
inherited from her mother. She says it frequently leads her to
produce work that is often lighthearted, emphasizes the
transparent brilliance of the medium and her own appreciation of
color harmonies and joyous themes.